Hello Sandi and PDT. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my thread. I'm not sure that I need to advice now and I'll explain why.
It's been an intense year/couple of months/couple of weeks. For most of my life I've been trying to fill the hole inside. For 18 years, I've been trying to take from my wife in order to be complete. I no longer need something from her to be complete. I am enough. As I look back at our relationship, I'm struck by how all of our interactions had an underlying drama and high emotional content. It was like living in the midst of a hurricane each of us with an underlying motive, trying to get from the other what we perceived that we needed to be whole and each of us with nothing extra to give.
I've been working on me for a while. I've been growing. Last week, the new me gained ascendancy and I was strong enough to face the information I have and no longer willing to put up with anything and everything to keep the girl. My wife has known subconsciously from very early in our relationship that she is in the power position. I allowed her to define who I was by accepting her definition of what was acceptable behavior.
I have plenty of circumstantial evidence and she denies that there is anything amiss going on. I know that she is unfaithful, but, I need concrete evidence. I need it because there is a part of me that wonders if she is correct and I'm screwing things up. I know I'm not wrong, but, part of me won't believe. I need that evidence so that I can trust myself again. I may also need it as a club to force from my wife a frank honest conversation about where we are and where we are going. At that time, I will give my wife an ultimatum that she can either choose me or a divorce and choosing me means moving back into the family home, working hard on our marriage, individual counseling with my input, complete transparency to me and no further contact with any of her friends that she's made since summer 2007. My estimation of the probability of her choosing me is essentially zero.
I see no benefit in exposing her affairs to everyone. She is already judged by her family for her drinking and is thus nearly estranged from them. She spends minimal time with the children and if she notices the changes in our interactions, she undoubtedly attributes the changes to her moving out and her decision to divorce me. My FIL is an alcoholic with a gambling problem. He took his family through bancruptcy twice before my MIL divorced him over his several affairs. Then, his second marriage ended because of his drinking and gambling. He finally quit drinking when diagnosed with pancreatitis and being told to quit or die. I didn't see any difference in his behavior when his relationships fell apart or when his family turned away from him. Like her father, my wife more than most people I know responds very poorly to being pushed. I see nothing to be gained by outing her. Additionally, she is an attractive woman, if the men in her life right now disappeared, she would only go find others. As best I can figure, she is firmly in the middle of a mid-life crisis and except for a few more wrinkles that botox can't fix, she has regressed back to who she was when we met.
I've read her private communications. At times, she experiences guilt about being away from the children and she does know that she needs personal counseling. However, right now the dark side of her personality is in control. The lessening of negative emotions between us is a step forward as that perhaps points toward the possibility that we can parent together amicably. For nearly all of the last 18 years, I was the source of all her problems. I want out of that role. I want her to feel guilty and know that the guilt isn't from me, it's from inside.
I don't hold out hope of saving my marriage right now. I only hope to provide for my children the most stability that I can in the midst of the chaos. I think that if I can help my children to come fully into maturity before they marry and help them to choose wisely their spouses, I'll have given them a wonderful gift.
We should have never married one another. I look at her now and wonder if beyond the 18 years together and the kids, if I met her today and got to know her, would I marry her? She is a woman with low self-esteem who has never learned that she must combine hard work with her talent in order to have success. She is an asthmatic smoker with a drinking problem who struggles with depression and ADD who has all but abandoned her children and is cheating on her husband. It sure doesn't paint a pretty picture when put that way.
I love the good side of her and I hate this side of her. The good times have been very good and the bad times have been very bad. Perhaps at this point, all that is left is to spend peaceful time together doing things with the kids.
